Unordered List

Tuesday, 27 August 2013

OK, let's be real here. 99% of this section is gonna be about Erik and Charles, firstly because 99% of the movie is about Erik and Charles, and secondly because most of the other dude costumes are pretty dull. I mean, Darwin's clothes were inspired by Muhammed Ali, but in the end he was just wearing a tight polo shirt and jacket. And Havok's All-American Boy ensemble could easily have been the actor's costume from that Taylor Swift video. (N.B. This is irrelevent info, but I was totally shocked to discover that Lucas Till, the actor who played Havoc, is only 22, and therefore was 18 when "You Belong With Me" was filmed. I sort of assumed he was one of those Hollywood "teenage" actors who is actually 27, like the cast of Teen Wolf.)Like many big blockbuster movies, XMFC's strategy was to hire a really great cast to prop up some exceptionally clunky dialogue. Actually, that counts for all the X-Men movies, but XMFC wins the prize for that scene where Magneto uses his powers to kill some former Nazis. When they ask, terrified, "Who ARE you?" he replies, "Frankenstein's monster," instead of the OBVIOUS COMEBACK of, "I'm the Master Race." I'm so frustrated by this scene!!!! Like, four exclamation marks worth of frustrated! Frankenstein's monster doesn't even make sense in context, whereas Erik describing himself as the Master Race is both relevent to the situation and accurately illustrate's Erik's own view of himself and mutantkind. Aaarrgh.

Tuesday, 20 August 2013

I wasn't gonna write a review this week, but then Marie reminded me of the many stupid things in this episode that needed to be catalogued for posterity. Not that I didn't enjoy it, but that enjoyment was helped along by the fact that I was a) playing the Teen Wolf drinking game, and b) watching it with someone who had never seen the show before, thus rendering everything hysterically funny. (Try explaining three seasons of convoluted Teen Wolf soap-opera subplots in one minute or less. TRY IT.)

i just watched teen wolf and it was exactly what id expected from teen wolf.
— Merlin (@Typhonatemybaby) August 20, 2013

The Alpha Pack/darach storylines are more or less wrapped up, THANK GOD, hopefully leaving the show to do a better job with season 3B. And the episode ends with the satisfying combination of parental survival (duh, they weren't gonna kill them off, hello), Stiles/Scott friendship, and Derek and Cora shipping out to a group therapy retreat together. It's just too bad that there are a ton of problems lingering on from earlier points in the season. Regarding the treatment of all the villains/antagonists in this episode, I can't help but feel that Teen Wolf is going in a distinctly Supernatural-esque direction. When I wrote the Teen Wolf drinking game yesterday, most of the rules were basically affectionate jokes about all the dumbass shit that happens in this show, but one was pretty serious: the rule about female or POC characters being killed off while the white men survive. The two permanent deaths of the episode were Jennifer and Kali. Deucalion's survival was mostly down to Derek and Scott's distaste for coldblooded murder, but from an audience perspective it was both unsatisfying and pointless to see him walk away unscathed. Not to mention frustrating when 75% of the main character deaths have been women, in a show where the main cast is already about 75% male overall.

Monday, 19 August 2013

OK, the midseason finale is upon us. After tonight, there's no more Teen Wolf until January 2014. To help you deal with the pain, I've adapted this drinking game from a rather simpler version my brother & I invented when watching the first few episodes last year. I recommend playing it using something with a relatively low alcohol content, because I don't want anyone to end up hospitalised. Disclaimer: I know that the episode was leaked last week, but I haven't watched it yet. These rules were created spoiler-free. (Oh, and you can reblog the drinking game from here.)

Take a sip if...

Anyone takes off his shirt.

Stiles’s eyes glisten with tragic, unshed tears.

Someone uses a totally pointless martial arts move like leaping
against a wall, or backflipping over something they could’ve just walked
around.

Peter Hale acts like a Disney villain but someone trusts him anyway.

A student at Beacon Hills High is clearly a 24-year-old Abercrombie & Fitch model.

Any scene inexplicably takes place in the boys’ locker room. (Double if it’s at night.)

Lydia is smarter than everyone else in the room.

The twins rip off their shirts and transform into the Werewolf Megazord.

Tuesday, 13 August 2013

This episode would've been really excellent if not for these three factors:

The idea of Derek (or indeed anyone) trusting Peter about anything now stretches credibility to breaking point. I realise that Derek is desperate, emotionally vulnerable, and an idiot, but even these traits shouldn't be able to completely overrule his other distinguishing feature: his paranoia when it comes to trusting anyone. Why on earth listen to anything Peter says, when Peter is so obviously a Disney villain of the first degree? Whenever he gives anyone some "useful advice", the camera immediately pans round to show him rubbing his hands together in glee, and/or dropping arsenic into their wine glass. COME ON. No one is less deserving of a second chance than Peter.

On a related topic, Peter and Lydia's bizarre, 10-second non-scene at Derek's apartment was atrocious. Not only has NOTHING been resolved with regards to their backstory as victim and abuser, but there was comedy music in the background of them just sort of blinking in embarrassment as if the last time they'd seen each other, Peter had done nothing worse than accidentally seeing her in her underwear or something. This is one of the worst continuity issues of the season, made even more unpleasant by the fact that Jeff Davis literally just forgot about it.

The entire cast's inability to keep each other informed of what's going on. Teen Wolf sometimes manages to be pretty genre-savvy about using cellphones etc (ie, in the hospital scene where Allison and Isaac use video chat to see what's going on inside). However, there are also A LOT of problems that could be solved with very simple communication. Basically, everyone needs to learn to text everyone else AS SOON as they find out any information about the Darach/the Alpha Pack/evil relatives coming to town, and also everyone needs to start wearing GPS tracking chips in their shoes. Actually I'm sorta surprised the Argents don't already do that.

There were a bunch of great things in this episode, though. The minor character appearances were back on form, featuring Morrell as a total badass (I almost find her interesting now), Shantal Rhodes being flawless as per usual (LUV HER), and Scott McCall's douchey deadbeat dad showing up and being instantaneously dislikeable. Honestly, introducing him via Stiles was an inspired idea, because if Stiles doesn't like someone? Then we don't like them either. DEADBEAT DAD MCCALL IS THE STEVE CARLSBURG OF TEEN WOLF.

Tuesday, 6 August 2013

After several episodes of mystifying characterisation decisions and weird, floundering plotlines, Teen Wolf has gone back to doing what it does best: silly action/horror sequences taking place in municipal buildings in the middle of the night. The only problem was that this episode seemingly confirms the fact that Derek did kill Paige, meaning that her flashback storyline apparently isn't some kind of weird Peter Hale fakeout. In case you've forgotten, the whole Derek-killed-his-first-girlfriend is probably the worst thing that ever happened on this show.

Shortly after watching last week's episode, I realised that I'm approximately 1000x more invested in Jennifer and Derek's relationship now I know that she's a skinless druid serial killer. Sorry if this makes me a human nightmare, but I personally think it would be a laugh riot if Derek was just like, "WHATEVS, everyone makes mistakes! And at least she loves me for who I am!" I support this pairing because it's exactly the kind of preposterous storyline that Teen Wolf would be able to make totally entertaining, if not actually "plausible". I mean, is it really that much weirder than Buffy/Angel? Angel doesn't even have a pulse.